JVC bats.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: SMALL BIZ: MADE IN COLORADO

Vance Clifton makes baseball bats by hand and gives the proceeds to a scholarship fund in the name of his late son, Jake, who was going to junior college to play baseball before his untimely death in 2011. "After our son died, there was a cottonwood tree that broke off," Vance said. "I carved it into a bat." Vance, who's worked on a ranch north of Pueblo for the last 30 years, makes about 400 bats a year from hand-sorted maple, birch and ash billets. Many of his bats are...